i hit 20,000 followers on instagram this week.
which is a slightly ridiculous number of people to have watching you take yourself to dinner and talk about your dating life.
i’m proud of it. of course i am. i’ve put time, energy and quite a lot of myself into this little corner of the internet. it feels lovely to know that people want to be here.
but there’s another number i’m much more interested in.
i’ve received at least 54 direct messages from people, mainly women, telling me they’re going on a trip because of something i’ve shared.
people with somewhere they want to go who have decided they’re going.
that was all i wanted to achieve.
the things we keep putting off
there are so many reasons to wait.
your friends can’t get the same time off. someone is saving for a house. someone has kids. someone says they’d love to come, but the conversation never gets as far as a booking.
or you thought you’d have a partner by now. someone to go away with. someone to sit opposite you at dinner and discuss whether ordering another bottle is a good idea.
for the record, i would still very much like that person.
preferably tall. good at follow up questions. capable of booking a restaurant.
but there are places i want to see while the recruitment process continues.
i started going alone because i was tired of missing out. i wanted the trip, the dinner, the experience. eventually, wanting those things became stronger than the discomfort of doing them by myself.
that doesn’t mean i’ve stopped feeling awkward. there are still moments when i wish someone was beside me. there are lovely things i’d like to share with someone, then come home and talk about again.
i go anyway. usually, i’m glad i did.
what a follower count can’t tell you
social media makes it very easy to measure yourself.
how many people watched. how many followed. how many liked the thing you spent an hour making while the thing you filmed in twelve seconds did better.
you can have a perfectly good day, open an app and suddenly feel behind.
i do it too.
so those messages have given me something useful to come back to.
a follower count tells me how many people have chosen to stay around. those messages tell me that something we’ve talked about here has made its way into someone’s actual life.
there’s now a trip being planned. a decision being made. something they wanted to do that they’re giving themselves permission to do.
i don’t know every detail of those 54 trips. i don’t know how nervous each person feels or what they’ll find when they get there.
but i know what it takes to stop waiting and make a booking.
especially when you’ve spent a long time thinking you need someone beside you before you can begin.
this is what i hoped for
i never wanted you to watch my life and feel like yours was smaller.
i wanted you to see me doing something alone and think you might be able to do it too.
you don’t need to travel the way i do. you don’t need eight months, a swag or a particularly enthusiastic relationship with airport departures.
maybe you want two nights somewhere beautiful. a walk followed by a long lunch. a trip you’ve been talking about for years.
whatever it is, i hope being here makes it feel a little more possible.
and if you’re one of the people who has sent me a message, thank you. it means more than you probably realised when you typed it.
20,000 is lovely.
those 54 messages are what i’ll come back to when i’m wondering whether any of this is making a difference.
what’s the trip you keep waiting for someone to join you on? tell me in the comments. i’d love to know where you want to go. i would also love you to tell me what’s the biggest road block to you booking.